Working from home is powering productivity

I think a lot of people are talking past each other. I’ve mostly WFH since long before the pandemic, in many different capacities at many companies. A lot of people have tunnel vision and the reality is more nuanced than most allow.

For IC work that requires minimal collaboration, WFH is often more productive. Fewer interruptions, more focus. However, when the role requires detailed collaboration and regular interaction with others, productivity for WFH falls off a cliff. This has been measurable at every company I’ve worked for that does a decent job of collecting these metrics. And anecdotally, I can feel it in my own job. When I am doing focus work, WFH is great and I get a lot done. When I need a lot of whiteboard time or deep discussions with my peers, WFH is very inefficient regardless of the remote setup, and the difference is so stark that it is difficult to argue.

I think most people are talking their own book. If you are an IC or mostly just do individual focus work, then of course WFH is great. If you need to iteratively collaborate with people on complex design problems or work products, WFH objectively has low efficiency in every organization I’ve seen try it, including companies that are remote-centric.

There is a lot of motivated reasoning in these discussions and little acknowledgement that productivity between WFH and RTO varies greatly depending on the task at hand. Every company and most roles are a mix of these types of tasks. I think many companies these days recognize this and try to allocate accordingly, but it creates legal, social, and other issues if you treat employees differently in this regard based on the nature of their roles. The reality that some people must commute to do their jobs effectively creates a class system of sorts but organizations needs all roles to be setup to ensure reasonable productivity.

This is not a black and white situation, it is a complex social problem.

I am literally at least 10x when I work from home.

I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking.

Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev sweatshop.

I also make more money, can spend more time with my family because I don’t commute, and plenty of other positives.

I love the work, I enjoy working with my colleagues and I can set my own boundaries by setting office hours and scheduling meetings. There is very rarely anything that derails my day anymore. Everything is much better documented because everything must live in confluence or Jira or it doesn’t exist. The company saves tons of money on real estate.

If you can change your processes and workflow to take advantage of tools that suit remote work, it’s superior in basically every way.

Pry it from my cold dead hands.

It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH.

Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far from the truth, workers in general don't have anything like the same composition of tasks that CEOs do).

It's unfortunate to that it has divided into camps, as there are bound to be cases/roles/groupings of workers where one approach comes out better and others where it's worse. But very quickly everyone went pretty much for one-size fits all (with a few exceptions).

I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter.

How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are still on the last days of this post-covid efficiency wave, coupled with the buffer of capital from the money that was created in the last few years.

I'm usually not a doomer, but it's hard to see a way around the next downturn not creating irreversible culture change through AI offshoring and mass layoffs.

The title of the article doesn't match the rest. Productivity is getting more from the same inputs, not getting more with more inputs.

First, there is very little data and just a couple conjectures thrown around. There isn't much substantive evidence of what it claims.

Second, even if people aren't commuting, it just assumes people work the same hours, but many people are probably working longer hours so you can't tell the impact on WFH on productivity.

Third, it doesn't look at outputs at all, especially the output of the company. While some (or even all) individuals might produce more, the group as a whole will have less communication and each employee might have less context of what else is going on in the company, so much of their contribution might not align as well with company objectives. Management of all the individuals would be more difficult and the company would be less of a team. This would support the idea that the increased productivity is only available to well managed groups. I think this sounds much more likely.

Fourth, much of the increase explained is from widening the labor pool. It explicitly mentions those with disabilities, stay at home mothers, and larger geographical inclusion. This isn't increasing productivity, just increasing the labor input.

This is more an opinion piece with some hand waving than actual proof

> is highly dependent on how well it’s managed.

That's the kicker, right there.

I am kind of in despair, at the quality of tech managers; especially "first line" managers, these days.

I currently work somewhere where I can't WFH. And as a counterpoint to pretty much everyone here I prefer it. My last role I was able to WFH.

Reasons I prefer going into the office:

- when work is done, I leave, and it's done.

- not using my resources (electricity / broadband / etc) for work.

- easier interaction with colleagues.

I liked it at the start, and liked the flexibility, but after a while hated that my home was also my workplace. I also found it was too easy to do unpaid overtime from home. After a while my productivity fell.

Caveat is I live within cycle distance to work. I hate commuting too, and wouldn't do more than 30 minutes.

I love work from home, but I can’t help but feel like its only real benefit is removing a lot of the overhead from jobs that are already considered overhead. Agree with this next part or not, it isn’t really debatable: to the average person (which we aren’t), basically anything that can be done on a computer from home is overhead.

Coding in the office? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Finance department? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Basically anything HR related? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Middle managers? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Graphics designers and the like? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.

Basically every job that has been moved to WFH should have been that way since computers became widespread, and it is essentially a problem that they weren’t WFH already. If it can be done entirely on a computer, it should be done from home. Leave the office space for housing and jobs that can’t be done from the comfort of one’s underwear.

Now we'll get to see which is more powerful: the invisible hand of the free markets, or the human tendency of power to accrete with autocrats, who seem to struggle immensely with the idea of letting people have the freedom to control their work environment and hours.

I love working from home and I plan to keep doing it.

But I can't deny that when a coworker needs help, rolling my chair next to theirs in office allows for a much larger bandwidth of knowledge sharing.

On the other hand my production skyrockets at home.

I have to WFH 100% of the time because my company’s HQ is three time zones away. I think I would be more productive if I could go to the office once or twice a week and have face to face interactions with my colleagues rather than always only slack/videocalls… On the other hand, if I were working at the office every day I would yearn for some WFH days. The best is in a balance of the two, with the flexibility to decide when to do each.

This paper is the first one I've read that outlines a pretty good case as to why WFH is beneficial to both workers and society. I encourage everyone to share it with others.

WFH productivity is a matter of management. Pre-covid my company tried it and found that productivity declined. Also, the managers found it hard to trust that some of the workers were working and not doing other things.

Working at the office has its drawbacks too. As a developer, the worst one for me was working in an open area. It's extremely hard to concentrate without having to function like a hermit and alienating fellow workers.

I think some of that is still the case, but if managers define realistic expectations, I don't see why WFH can't continue to work. It's more work for management at the start but in time, as management and workers get accustomed, it will work out.

It seems to be a win for employees and companies.

> To explain the benefits of labor market inclusion, consider that fully in-person jobs can be filled only by nearby employees. A human resources or information technology position in New York can, for example, be filled only by a local resident. Even if there are people in Bulgaria, Brazil, or Belize who would be a better fit, they cannot do the job if they are not there in person. But as soon as positions can be filled remotely, employers go from taking the best local employee to taking the best regional employee for hybrid and the best global employee for fully remote work.

Before professionals in HCOL cities celebrate this article, a primary argument of it refers to handing the job over to better qualified labor in a nonlocal talent pool; that is, outsourcing.

In my field of IT consulting I find the opposite to be true. Developing a shared understanding of client challenges, getting leaders to make and follow through on decisions, and learning our way around customer ecosystems takes forever over Teams, slack, or email.

If we knew exactly what needed to be done and were just cranking code I see how solitude works. But the constant streams of low bandwidth meetings to make decisions is brutal.

I would wager that there's a dead sea effect happening at these 'my way or the highway' RTO companies.

Top tier, upber-productive, marketable talents don't have to tolerate bullying, even in a weak employment market. So the companies pushing RTO the hardest see their hardest to replace talent evaporate quickly, and their most desperate (but thoroughly demoralized) staff cling on for dear life. Not as a rule, but definitely a tendency.

Meanwhile the most flexible companies can pick up talent easily, picking and choosing and building very tough rosters for quite reasonable prices.

Number one benefit to companies to allow WFH: they can pay me a senior level pay for staff level seniority, and I still come out ahead living in the Midwest versus moving to SF or NYC.

Work from home makes me LOYAL to a company, and makes me work my arse off! If you want to keep good employees, give them agency.

I do hybrid, I’m half-half from home and in the office. I work so hard when I work from home, and I’m so happy when I work from home, my desk is setup how I need, I get free coffee, I can listen to music, my dog sleeps on the bed. Most importantly, more of the work gets done.

I think the option to go into the office (on your own accord) is important. The main pro of the office is I can talk to team-mates and do learning sessions with them (the juniors).

But I do these as well from home every day too.

Unfortunately my work place is putting in place a 4 day in the office mandate, like we are children. All it does is make me want to look for jobs that respect employee agency.

Tell that one to Amazon. It's really not all about productively.

There's more incentives for large businesses, whether that's tax breaks, existing office space obligations or just the feeling of lording over the workers.

I don't think that will change too much. A remote company has to be fundamentally remote on all levels otherwise it'd fall apart. That kinda buy in is difficult and usually companies who start remote work best like that. As everyone has already self selected for remote work.

I wrote this back in 2013, and I think much of it is still relevant. 11 years later I'm still WFH, and there's a fat chance you could ever get me into an office again.

https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/08/experiences-and-real...

When in office, I typically spend 70% of my time helping coworkers with their issues, since they feel like it's ok to just walk by and ask for help. When I work from home, my output skyrockets.

In essence, I'm a mentor, but have expectations to deliver high quality and reach tight deadlines.

I hate going to the office, since my commute is 45+45 minutes.

The moment I get forced to go to the office full time is the moment I take another offer where WFH is on the table.

Hire expencive, qualified workers who don't require hand-holding, and you won't have to care where they work from. Guaranteed.

Companies that require RTO, if they actually want their employees to return to office, should prioritize in their messaging the objective benefits/cost to working in the office. No vague-speak, no shaming people claiming that workers "don't work" at home, but rather objective analysis on what exact benefits they seek to accrue by mandating that work that could be done anywhere in the world must be done in separate rooms of a large corporate office space.

Since most companies that are enforcing RTO aren't doing this, it only makes sense that it is a covert mass layoff. They just want people to quit because they were planning on culling the herd anyway, and would prefer it be a self-selection of those who aren't willing to put up with bullshit.

I believe that Returning To the Office represents a significant step backward from a societal perspective. Governments should actively legislate against unnecessary in-person gatherings in offices.

To illustrate my point, I’ll share an anecdote that highlights the harm caused by this trend. I live in a major EU city, and last Wednesday, I had a doctor’s appointment in the city center at 4 PM, a peak traffic hour. Unfortunately, my bus was caught in a traffic jam. Despite the fact that buses typically have dedicated lanes in the EU, we were still stuck.

Suddenly, we heard the sirens of an emergency ambulance behind us. Unfortunately, the ambulance was also trapped in the gridlock. Other drivers tried to make way, but the road was too narrow to allow any effective movement. I don't know what the emergency was or who needed help, but it was clear that valuable time was lost—time that could be critical for saving lives.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, such traffic jams were virtually non-existent, as most people worked from home. Now, consider how many similar situations occur daily in cities around the world. RTO policies that force people to commute contribute to dangerous traffic congestion that can literally cost lives.

The societal disadvantages extend even further. When people work from an office, their homes still need heating and electricity; you can’t simply turn them off, especially in my climate. This means we end up maintaining two properties with full utility costs.

Additionally, there’s the increased wear on city infrastructure from more vehicles on the road, elevated levels of traffic pollution, and the under-utilization of office spaces that could be repurposed into affordable housing.

The push for RTO is clearly wasteful compared to the benefits of working from home.

Well I went into the article expecting it to be the 143rd article in the ouroborous of articles that all reference each other and at the bottom of them all is that one single absolutely horrible WFH study that was done in Europe a few years ago, but I got stuck before even getting into the article.

The title: "Working From Home Is Powering Productivity" -> "X is Y".

The main headline: "A fivefold increase in remote work since the pandemic could boost economic growth and bring wider benefits" -> "X could Y".

Before even getting into the article they went from strongly claiming something to no longer claiming something but instead using a weasel word that could mean anything.

I could be the King of France. I could be 9 feet tall. Could doesn't mean anything.

Instantly closed the article, and not reading further.

no, please, I want to be in office and hear the coffee machine grinding coffee for everybody in the office /sarcasm

Who wouldn't want their workers boarded up at home working all day for the man.

Why is it ICs will argue endlessly for and against WFH, while at least in the press the main story from employers is pro-RTO?

Embracing remote is such a huge win for hiring (access a way larger talent pool) and budgets (who needs a lease??). ICs overall are more open to remote than otherwise so it's decently rare you lose a hire because remote.

Are these companies just not giving interviews? I get it: other companies screaming RTO drive ICs into your arms, no need to draw attention to it...

i definitely know myself that i'm less productive working from home than working on the office. the commute (or the ritual of it) and the different environment makes all the difference.

Sometimes politics comes into play at the office. "This is the decision. We're just informing you about it because we agreed in our informal hallway chat that it's the right thing to do."

Suddenly all of the doc comments and Slack threads become meaningless and are swept aside in favor of the consensus that a few people came to face-to-face. Remote employees will never be as politically effective as the employees in the hallway.

All I know is some people like it some don’t. It’s based on the environment they have at home. Some people’s home and psyche isn’t good for wfh for various reasons

15 second cities now!

Wfh is better but going out to lunch, the whole notion of a lunch break, or everyone eating at about the same time everyday is something I miss about offices.

Offices are also like the schools we grow up in. There's a continuity through life that's been lost.

I've been much more productive working at home since the 1980s, when we had to use a dolly to take the computer and CRT monitor out the office to the trunk of the car, home for a few days to get some peace to focus.

yes, working from home is one of the great solutions if you want a work-life balance. In my country, the term work from home became popular when the pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, and til now several company (mostly tech, blockchain, and finance) still doing it. But honestly, if you asking about productivity working from the office is still a better choice.

never forget, that a need exists for people to travel ... working from home reduces the profit of the oil lobby significantly ...

i am sorry to point this out ... but its a primary driving point!

I’d love to see a study on the carbon and energy impact of WFH vs commuting to an office. I would assume that for knowledge workers, WFH would be more efficient.

I think we have to go from the factory village to the village factory and start designing/building houses to work from.

Examples excluded on purpose. :)

WFH has been a life saver for me. I cannot walk due to an injury and I have IBS, ADHD, and Mysophobia.

The answers here seem to only allow for one solution: where no technical requirements exist in favor of RTO, one should provide employees the choice. Each person has their own place where productivity is good, and it may even change between RTO and WFH.

Force should not be applied, or else one might start wondering if e.g. the commute time should be paid time, or pay should increase in a WFH case since the employee suddenly shoulders more costs.

Take that, Jassy.

> Economics is famous for being the dismal science.

Economics is not a science. It’s politics dressed up as a science.

As others mentioned, the shakiness of whatever this is (an opinion piece) doesn’t really convey much effort into a rock solid argument.

Put another way, if you are going to look at pro-RTO under a microscope and critique every single thing about it, you have to do the same for pro-WFH.

Thus far, I’ve yet to hear anything solid for either. Just flaky nonsense and non sequiturs and jumping from topic to topic.

Articles like this are talking past the RTO mandates. Ignore what the mandates say in the emails. They are trying to lay people off without suffering the PR downsides. They do not care how productive you were or are going to be. They need to fix the balance sheet for the next quarter, THEN they can worry about productivity.

Explain to me why work that can be done form home can't be nearshored?

But but but.... Won't somebody please think of the hurt feelings amongst the commercial landlord community.

Seriously though, any of those a-hole CEOs, like Amazon or Intercom may as well come out and say they don't trust their staff, all the while getting chauffeur driven into the office themselves and have legions of housekeepers and nannies taking care of things at home for them.

never forget that a need to return to office exists ...

its a need to travels ... to consume fossil fuels and to benefit effectivly some sharhe holders ...

its A primary reason.

I'd really like to see how the American libertarian copes with the return to office mandates.

I've had a lot of American colleagues that do not wish to return to office, the types that believe in "freedom", "individual responsibility" and "if you do not like the job go work somewhere else".

As the employers are closing in on them, they slowly start to understand that unless they collectively punch back they _will_ yield sooner or later.

They are still on their pleading / "negotiating" phase at the moment, but let us see.

No it’s not.

@Andy Jassy

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